Research on the Western Economics Teaching Model Based on Constructivism

M & D FORUM
Research on the Western Economics Teaching Model Based on
Constructivism
LU Huali
School of Economics and Management, Henan Polytechnic University, Jiaozuo, Henan, P.R. China,
454000
[email protected]
Abstract: The traditional western economics teaching model is single, with students in a passive state,
poor in learning initiative and activity. For this reason, this article tries to analyze how to apply
constructivism teaching model into western economics teaching reform. Firstly, the article introduces
some basic theories of constructivism. Secondly, based on the constructivism theory, it discusses the
drawbacks of traditional western economics teaching model. Thirdly, the article mainly analyses the
application of constructivism theory in western economics teaching. Finally, it expounds the problems
which should be concerned in the progress of teaching model improvement by use of constructivism
theory.
Keywords: Constructivism, western economics, teaching model
1 Introduction
Western economics is the core curriculum and professional basic course of economic and management
specialties in universities and colleges. However, most universities and colleges adopt a traditional
teaching model, basically cramming education in class, mainly teacher-centered, and students’ focus put
on class notes. This teaching model ignores the enthusiasm and initiative of students. Besides, economic
principles elaborated in this course are mostly expounded and proved by mathematical derivation and
economic models. It is difficult to stimulate students’ interest in learning, and students’ creative thinking
and application abilities are bounded. Then it is crucially important to reform the teaching models in
western economics. The core of constructivism is student-centered, with a belief that learning is a
positive and initiative construction process, which can fully enhance students’ learning ability and
learning efficiency. Therefore, constructivism teaching model, which is mainly in the form of students’
cooperative learning, compensates for the disadvantages of traditional teaching model and is of great
significance in improving education effect and quality of western economics.
2 Basic Concept of Constructivism Theory
The content of constructivism theory is very rich, but the core can be summarized just in one sentence:
It is student-centered, emphasizing students’ active exploration, discovery on knowledge, and active
construction on the meaning of knowledge, rather than traditional teaching, which only transfers
knowledge from teachers’ minds to students’ notebooks. Constructivism advocates under the guidance
of teachers, learner-centered learning. In other words, it is stressed the role of the learner's cognitive
subject, without losing sight of the guiding role of teachers. The teacher plays a role of helper and
facilitator in meaning construction rather than a knowledge imparter and indoctrinator, while the student
is the subject of information processing, the active meaning constructor, rather than a passive recipient
of external stimulus and a subject to be taught. Thus, the role of teachers should be changed from a
traditional authority of transferring knowledge to a loyal supporter of students construct knowledge, to
become a senior partner and cooperator in students learning. Teachers must create a good learning
environment, students in this environment can expand their learning by ways of experiment,
independent inquiry, cooperative learning and etc. Teachers should be actively helping and guiding
students construct knowledge, stimulate students’ interest in learning, and lead and maintain their
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motivation to learn. Teachers should try to organize collaborative learning, discuss and communicate,
lead in the collaborative learning process, and help developing towards the direction of meaning
construction. Obviously, it closely coincides with the aim of creative teaching activities.
With students-centered, it emphasizes learning, while teachers-centered, it emphasizes teaching. This is
the most fundamental difference of these two kinds of education thoughts and concepts. Thus there are
two opposing learning theories, teaching theories and instructional design theories. As the environment
constructivism learning required is strongly supported by the latest contemporary information and
technological achievements, it makes the growing constructivism theory and the teaching practice of the
majority teachers to combine in general and it become the guiding ideology of deepening teaching
reform in domestic and foreign schools.
3 By Constructivism Theory to See the Drawbacks of Traditional Western
Economics Teaching Model
As western economics courses are rich and complex in knowledge system, in the constraints of limited
teaching time, the teachers pay more attention to the theory teaching, taking a more traditional teaching
model, teacher-centered teaching. The classroom is almost entirely dominated and controlled by the
teacher. The main role of the student's cognitive is neglected. The energy is put on listening and making
records of lectures and class notes. They are in a completely passive acceptance status. It is difficult to
resonate and think in the learning process for them. And then they will lose interest in learning western
economics. Students used to memory some basic knowledge of points by rote, only to meet
understanding and memorizing the economic principles the teachers taught. Few take the initiative to
learn and study the reasons behind the principle. There is no active initiative to find books at the
forefront of knowledge and information to expand the range of knowledge, let alone to investigate,
analyze, and solve the real economic problem independently. This deviation from the student-centered
teaching model, leads to students taught only armchair strategists, with high scores and low abilities.
The teaching effectiveness can be imagined.
Compared with the traditional teaching model, students prefer to one that can give them appropriate
guidance and allow them to take part in it. The constructivism teaching with the lively, flexible, and
students to participate in the significant characteristics, makes the students in specific situation, be in a
proactive position from beginning to end, and increase learning interest in this course, through their own
exploration and practice concretize abstract knowledge, break through the abstract and the difficult to
understand of western economics.
4 Application of Constructivism Theory in Western Economics Teaching
4.1 Constructivism theory of teaching design principles
4.1.1 Heuristic principle
Constructivism is to promote student-centered learning under the guidance of teachers. The learning
process is a process of activity cognition process, which is carried out under the guidance of teachers. It
emphasizes student-centered, but does not ignore the guidance of teachers, who are teaching instructor
and organizer. In the guidance, the first is to arouse the curiosity of students, present thought-provoking
questions, and to guide students to think independently and actively explore. Teachers should give
students the opportunity to apply what they have learned in different contexts, encourage them to take
the initiative to discover problems, and develop their initiative spirit and practical ability.
4.1.2 Situational principle
Constructivism emphasizes that learning is linked with certain situation. The essence of learning
depends on learning environment so to achieve the active construction of knowledge for learners. When
learning in situations that similar to real world, students can make use of relevant knowledge and
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experiences in existing knowledge cognitive structure to assimilate new knowledge and give new
meaning to new knowledge. Otherwise, if the original knowledge and experiences could not assimilate
new knowledge, then it will have to give rise to "accommodation" process, that is, to improve or
reconstruction the original cognitive structure so as to accommodate new knowledge. It breaks through
the traditional teaching model disadvantage that can not provide a vivid, rich situation, limiting learners’
construction on knowledge.
4.1.3 Collaborative principle
Individuals’ understanding of the outside word, constructed according to their own experiences is
limited. It is by sharing and coordination to understand more accurately and comprehensively. Therefore,
the teaching design should take various forms of collaborative learning approach, such as discussion,
negotiation, cooperation, competition, role play, etc., so that students have access to a variety of
different perspectives, and in the organization and under the guidance of teachers, for some issues to
explore together, exchange and challenge in order to promote cooperation and interaction among the
learner, other learners and teachers, and so that the students have a new insight into the knowledge and a
higher level of understanding in the comparison of multiple perspectives.
4.1.4 Experiencing principle
Learners to complete the construction of knowledge, the best way is to enable learners in the real
environment of the real world to feel, to experience, not just listening to people’s introduction and
explanation on this experience. Therefore, instructional design should not only concern the effective
transfer of knowledge, but also concern about the experience and impression that the students gained in
the learning process. To completely abandon the traditional teaching, which is teacher-centered,
emphasizing the imparting of knowledge, educating students as objects of knowledge rather than
concerning their inner experience. Truly allow students to feel and experience the profound insight into
knowledge to achieve the ultimate goal of meaning construction on what they have learned.
4.2 Constructivism theory of teaching design specific strategies
4.2.1 Create Situations, ask questions
In the creation of learning environment, the first to take into fully account is what knowledge and
concepts students need to obtain. According to the students’ learning content and learning objectives to
create authentic contexts that need to solve the problem for them, and let them in this specific situation
unfold step by step the rich and fun learning activities. The context design should pay attention to
exploration and reality. Hot issues of economic life, especially those happened around the students can
act as the material to create situations. After creating a good learning environment, teachers select the
events closely related to the current learning task as the main learning content. Issues identified by
teachers need have a certain level, are of moderate difficulty. It can very well stimulate students’ interest
in learning, and lay a good foundation to start learning activities for the next step.
Such as the teaching of price discrimination, you can ask students when they go shopping don’t they
find that newly marketed clothes often do not have a discount, but after a period of time there will be a
discount. Why businesses should adopt such a pricing strategy? And when we go to the movies, or out
of play, by a student card it can get a preferential price. Then why should businesses adopt differential
pricing strategy? These situations have occurred in settings around the students. They will resonate, and
consciously think about the economic reasons behind this phenomenon. Another example when teaching
mentioned macroeconomic policies, it can start with the current inflation problem occurred in our
country. Ask everybody in the past year of 2010, what the greatest feeling is when they go shopping.
The general feeling is stuff is more and more expensive and no enough money to spend. In this way to
create situations from personal experience, students’ interest in learning will be aroused. Then show
students some of the inflation picture, form or video. For example, show students the CPI data chart of
each month of the year 2010, so students have a more professional understanding of the price and show
the amount of changes in broad money M2, allow students to think of what kind of relationship between
inflation and money supply.
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4.2.2 Organize groups, collaborative learning
According to the issues raised by the created situation, teachers provide students with valuable clues to
solve the problem. Students reflect on by initiative and to put forward their views. Teachers through the
evaluation of the views presented by the students smoothly pass on classroom teaching. Students are
also very eager to know the answer. It greatly enhances the students’ interest in learning, and improves
students’ ability to solve problems independently. Through the "teacher-student interaction” and
"Interactions among students" it is to achieve mutual exchange and influence between students and
teachers and students themselves, and continually to enrich and improve the understanding of the
knowledge. This mutual learning, mutual exploration learning process, either to have fun, lively,
cooperative and competitive learning environment, but also can draw a relatively comprehensive and
correct conclusion on the current issues that they have learned. Such as referred to market theory
whether a company shall make a stop production decision, it can be related to cases of personal
decisions to the introduction. Assume students are going to the movies, and have bought a movie ticket,
but lost the ticket before going to the cinema. Make them discuss whether it should buy a ticket again or
not. Some answers yes and some no. At first they only speak their own answers intuitively, and do not
have a deep thinking. Then teachers let students give their reasons for the decisions, at this time they
enter into a deep thinking. Teachers should not deny their answers then. The key is to inspire students
thinking, so that everyone is involved in the discussion. After a vigorous debate of the students,
somewhere the students do not understand is the difficulty of learning and is also the key to solve the
problem. At the same time, it is also the focus of teaching. This time through the introduction of the
concept of sunk costs, teachers give explanation of the economic theory. After a proper coaching,
students will suddenly have a feeling of seeing the light. It must to know that to abandon sunk costs
when making decisions. And then teachers further encourage students to apply the theory to business
decision-making. For example, the business is stagnant for some restaurants. A few customers’ revenue
does not seem to make up the operating costs of the restaurant, so why the restaurant should open still?
Students have just paved the way to the knowledge, and then they will apply the economic theory in
their discussion, thus deepening the understanding of what they learned.
Collaborative learning process is the process to analyze and solve problems, which is the focus of
teaching. This part of the teaching skills required of teachers is relatively high. The teacher's role in this
process is very important. In the organization of students’ discussion, teachers should encourage
students to speak what they know, remind students to listen carefully to the views of other members, and
pay attention to keeping classes in order, participate but do not give conclusive when urging the students
to discuss, and encourage students who are not good at speaking. After discussion if students have
basically mastered the content of what they have learned, teachers let the students make a summary and
guide students into deeper studies. After a heated debate if students fail to solve the problem, in this time
teachers explain the relevant economic theory systematically. Then you can encourage students to set
their own situation, use the economic theory learned to analyze the question raised in the situation. It is
not only consolidating students what they have learned, but also making them always in a state of active
learning.
4.2.3 Evaluation and reflection
Constructivism teaching process is the process students solve problems by themselves. This active
participation in problem-solving process comparative truly reflects the effects of students’ learning. In
the teaching process, teachers should pay more attention to the initiative and participation of students,
make record on their classroom performance, praise and make recommendations on their performance.
Teachers should also pay attention to listen to the feedback from the students, understand the response,
and collect useful recommendations, to gain experience for future teaching.
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5 Problems Should Pay Attention to in Practical Applications of Constructivism
Teaching Model
First of all, compared with traditional teaching methods, constructivism teaching model requires
teachers to strengthen the guidance role. To become a guide and helper of knowledge, teachers must
have a wide range of knowledge, rather than completely tied to the lesson plans prepared. Teachers
should prepare in advance much more solutions for every issue possibly raised, and control classroom
instruction flexibly. Otherwise, it is difficult to control the classroom freely. Teachers would have
students do not trust.
Second, for students, to become active constructors of knowledge, they must have strong learning
motivation and strong self-learning ability. Students need to develop a good habit of self study and
active consulting references, so as to expand their horizons. Students should abandon the traditional
learning methods of memorizing theoretical knowledge by rote, consciously study and use knowledge,
and find examples from the life to analyze, consequently to appreciate the fun of learning economics.
Finally, as there is no uniform standard of constructivism theory evaluation system, it has a certain
degree of difficulty in actual teaching operation. Then it requires that in the use of constructivism
teaching model, teachers need to grasp the scale. Considering from aspects of student's learning attitude,
learning process, and learning participation etc, teachers make an objective evaluation on students’
learning outcomes. The evaluation can play a role of leading, incentive and improving, thereby to
enhance the confidence of students’ learning and stimulate their motivation to learn.
6 Conclusion
Constructivism-based Western Economics teaching model is good for students to improve on active
learning and participation, and to train students in innovation and problem solving skills. With no doubt,
the constructivism teaching model requires more stringent conditions than the traditional teaching model,
and also requires a higher level of professional competence on teachers. Teachers need to improve the
teaching philosophy, value the subjectivity of students. Teachers must be not complacent on elaborating
the basic principles in the textbook, should be concerned about the latest foreign theory and academic
activities, enriching teaching resources, and introducing knowledge of the latest economic theory into
teaching process.
References
[1]. Zhu Xuejun. Study on Western Economics Teaching Method Reform. Industry and Technology
Forum, 2009 (06): 176 ~ 177 (in Chinese)
[2]. Zheng Hongling. Study on the Reform of Teaching Western Economics. North Trade, 2009 (06):
173 ~ 174 (in Chinese)
[3]. He Kekang. Constructivism Teaching Models, Teaching Methods and Instructional Design.
Journal of Beijing Normal University (Social Sciences), 1997 (05) (in Chinese)
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